Tuesday, 22 July 2014

Last week I
was up in the Scottish Borders for a week of fieldwork. It was fantastic
weather all week, with comfortable heat wave temperatures of 20oC in
the shade and hardly any rain. I was joined by field assistant Kirsty Summers,
a second year undergraduate from the University of Leicester. We surveyed and
sampled two new field sites, along with revisiting the main coastal site to work
on a few specific sections while they were accessible at low tide.

Low tide at the main field site, with
excellent rock exposure

Starting
their Masters research projects with field studies were University of Leicester
students Hattie Dulson and Greg Phillpotts.

Hattie’s
project is titled “How variable were the Early Carboniferous ecosystems
inhabited by the earliest four-limbed vertebrates?“. This project will test the
hypothesis that an interval with newly-discovered plant and tetrapod fossils
represents a transition from a non-marine to a marine-influenced environment.

Greg’s
project is titled “Why were the Early Carboniferous floodplains of southern
Scotland key sites for preservation of the earliest four-limbed vertebrates?”This project will test the hypothesis
that a key
interval with important early tetrapod fossils represents an entirely
non-marine floodplain environment.

And my field
assistant from last year, Rachel Curtis
is doing a borehole-related Masters project entitled “Early Carboniferous
depositional environments in the Northumberland Basin and implications for
carbon-isotope stratigraphy”. This project will test the hypothesis that the
Northumberland Basin was more marine-influenced than the neighbouring Tweed
Basin.

Friday, 11 July 2014

During our
Scottish Borders fieldwork week at the end of June, we took one day out for our
biannual team meeting. It was like a mini-conference, with 14 team members
present to give a progress update on their work. Now we are nearly two years
into the project we have many results already in. The team are now busy
interpreting these results and looking at how they relate to the larger
evolutionary picture. As always at these meetings, it was inspirational to see
how everyone’s expert knowledge contributes together to help us understand the
Tetrapod World.

Here is a
summary of the meeting:

The
University Museum of Comparative Zoology team (Jenny Clack, Tim Smithson, Ket
Smithson) talked about their recent visit to Blue Beach, in Canada and how that
compares to our sites in the Scottish Borders. The sedimentology and fossils
reveal some intriguing differences. We also heard about research updates on
tetrapods, lungfish, gyracanths, chondrichthyans and more! Including descriptions
of new and unusual specimens that are improving our understanding of how life
recovered after the End Devonian Mass Extinction.

The
University of Leicester team (Sarah Davies, Carys Bennett, Janet Sherwin)
talked about how we have been looking at the data from the core (isotopes,
sedimentology and micropalaeontology) to work out the ancient environments
present. I have been examining the correlations between the results from the
core and from our main field site, to look at changes in the environment over
time and space. Plus my findings on ostracods! Janet Sherwin presented on her work from sites in
Northumberland, which have a different sedimentology and fossil-content.

The
British Geological Survey team (Dave Millward, Tim Kearsey, Mike Browne) talked
about their latest findings on palaeosols and what they can tell us about the plants
and environment of the time. Some excellent new finds are giving us a wealth of
new information on this topic. And using the BGS records from the Ballagan
Formation they gave an excellent summary of data from 30+ sites and old
borehole records. They are using this data to examine changes across the region
(Scotland and the Scottish Borders), such as differences in evaporate deposits,
and through time.

The
University of Southampton team (John Marshall, Emma Reves) discussed their palynology
results, comparing the data from the core and our main field site. There was
much discussion about the links between spores and their parent plants, and
updates on biostratigraphy.

The
National Museums of Scotland team (Nick Fraser, Andrew Ross) discussed their
latest work on the rare specimens of eurypterids from our field sites. We also
talked about our upcoming museum exhibition plans.

There
were also several project partners and volunteers present at the meeting, who
we always welcome. This time we were joined by four palaeontologists: Maggie
Wood, Sarah Finney, Becky Bennion and Vicen Carrio.

The TW:eed Team together at the
cottage in Foulden for our biannual meeting

With such
exciting results coming together, I cant wait until our next group meeting! Next week I am back in the field working on a new site, and meeting our new Masters students on the TW:eed Project.